According to my understanding of the new reform, courtesy of CNN:
Citizens will be required to have acceptable coverage or pay a penalty of $95 in 2014, $325 in 2015, $695 (or up to 2.5 percent of income) in 2016. Families will pay half the amount for children, up to a cap of $2,250 per family. After 2016, penalties are indexed to Consumer Price Index.
Um, okay, so I will definitely have to buy health care by 2015 or so. That I get. After that, dodging it starts to hurt. Meanwhile, my current MIT health care ends in May with the end of the Knight Fellowship. At that point, it seems likely that I'll return to being a freelance writer, so for about 3.5 years, I'm not sure what I'll be doing for health care. My previous strategy was to buy something relatively cheap with a high deductible--catastrophic coverage, essentially. But I can't say the approach was particularly satisfying. I spent some $ 1300 per year (premiums increased each year) and barely went to the doctor, because I essentially had to pay 100 % for anything routine, like a check up or a bad cold that wouldn't go away. To obtain significantly better coverage, I ...